one thing leads to another

To the fairly well-educated and logical mind, with its cache of about 20,000 or so words (an estimate that fluctuates by study),  there are more than a few words that seem to mean something other than what they actually mean. They can be a trap for writers the same way that obscure, complex usage rules are. With usage rules, it is generally accepted among authors that if one knows the rule it is sometimes acceptable to bend or break the rule for reasons of style. Not so much with words and their meanings.

One of the pitfalls lurks in the concept of "word families." An easy example of a word family is the word family for tone. If you know what tone is, and you know the general concepts of word forms, then you likely know the meanings of toned, toning, tonal, tones, and probably even intoned without much thinking about it. You could probably infer the meaning of tonicity if you ran across it, from your understanding of the root word tone and your understanding of word forms. The trapdoor opens when you decide to use tonicity in your own writing, without verifying your understanding of the meaning. Writing, "the tonicity of the painting's colors was inspirational" will make most people think you are making up your own words. It will make people dealing in medicine and biology laugh, because tonicity is a term specific to the state of firmness or functional readiness of body tissues or organs. It's fine to trust your instincts when reading a new word form, better to verify when you are using one.

Peril looms as well within the concept of "receptive knowledge" or your ability to infer the meaning of a word in the context of it's use. For instance, if you ran across a passage that said "the accident victim was dizzy and discombobulated", even though you might not be familiar with discombobulated, you might be able to deduce, through your receptive knowledge of the way people usually respond to accidents, that the victim had been thrown into a state of confusion. You could merrily read on, certain of what was going on, without ever adding discombobulated to your active vocabulary.

The risk starts when you add a word to your active vocabulary without ever really understanding what it means. That can happen when you read a word misused by the author using it. Through general reading, it would be simple for any reader to misconstrue the meaning of infer. Infer is so commonly misused when imply is what is intended that the error has perpetuated alarmingly. The meanings are opposite. If you write, "she inferred that I was a total jackass," those readers who know the difference between inferences and implications will assume that you did something to make others conclude that you were acting stupidly and offensively. If you were just minding your own business in the "10 items or fewer" lane at the supermarket with two lemons that you counted as one item of ten, and she was glaring at your basket then shooting you the stink eye, then she was implying you were a total jackass. You may have inferred from her over-reaction that the woman was a total nut-case. Who gets that incensed about a lemon?

Here are a few common word traps that snare many writers, both through assumptions about word families and receptive knowledge of the way language is commonly used:

• Penultimate—one of my favorites, because I was a willing victim. I always assumed that it was a stupid inflation of a perfectly good word. Something along the lines of saying something is "more unique" or "beyond infinite". Things ultimate, unique, or infinite are by definition insuperable. Through receptive knowledge I came to the incorrect conclusion that penultimate was just another example of language inflation for the sake of puffing up the image of the writer or speaker. Then one afternoon, I heard it used so often during the coverage of a race in the Tour de France that I decided to look it up. It means "second to last". That's it. We were watching the second-to-last race. A perfectly serviceable word. Just be aware that when you describe something as the penultimate example of, say, shrimp fra diavlo, that you are saying that there is something coming next that will be the last word on what a shrimp fra diavlo should be.

• Conflate—is not the same thing as inflate, aggrandize, or amplify. To conflate is to bring together; combine disparate parts into a composite. If someone conflated his resume, it doesn't mean he exaggerated his qualifications. Or it shouldn't anyway. It more properly means that he decided to combine his resumes for mime and quantum physics in the hopes that his combined skills would attract employers in need of  someone who could explain string theory entirely through dance.

• Insure—means to call Afflack for a policy. Ensure means to promise certainty. Insuring yourself against sky-diving accidents ensures a depletion of your bank account.

I know that's just three examples of oft misused  words, but this is running long. So just consider, in a free moment, looking up a few of these: nauseous, comprise, decimate, apprise, bemuse, whence, continual/continuous, dissemble, disinterested/uninterested, peremptory, sensual/sensuous, venial/venal.

The list could go on ad nauseum, but those are some interesting examples. I hope it encourages you to be curious both about the language you read and the language you use.

the other side of the coin

I've done my riff on bad clichés and how to avoid them, but every argument has two (or more) sides, and so I am going to visit how to use clichés effectively in writing.  And there are several ways they can enhance clear composition by making succinct what could be a labored and convoluted written detour in order to avoid them.

Choosing when to use a cliché is not a simple task.  Context matters, audience matters, subject matters, and forum matters. The audience comprises those who will read your writing, listen to your speech, or listen to you recite your latest poem.  The forum is the gathering of both audience and authors—those who participate in general on the topic you are addressing.  What is acceptable language at a coffee house poetry slam is certainly not likely what you would include in your thesis, unless of course, you are doing a thesis on coffee house poetry slams.  Even then, you would be wise to frame those references differently than you would if you were actually on the little stage, reciting your latest iambic-pentameter creation, “My Thesis Advisor is an AHole”.

With that said, here are my four rules for using clichés:

1.       A one word cliché doesn’t really count as a cliché, so don’t be dogging yourself over every little word you use that started out as one thing and morphed into another.  Think of it as a trope. A trope is a word, phrase, or expression that is used figuratively, usually for rhetorical effect.  The word “detour” I used in the first paragraph is a trope. It began its life as a word representing the physical diversion of traffic from some sort of obstacle or construction site.  It is an apt short-hand word to represent a verbal diversion from the main topic at hand. I am certainly not going to twist my writing into knots just to detour “detour”.  You’ll recognize a trope when you see one.  If you read in the paper that the DA dogged the defense attorney for emails sent by the CFO, you aren’t likely to think that he literally followed the defense attorney around slobbering and wagging his tail, begging for attention. A trope is the opposite of the useful cliché.  It no longer elicits an image specific to its origin. It has a new meaning that has entered the general lexicon. Which leads directly to my next rule.

2.       If a cliché elicits a clear image, I vote that it can be useful. “He twisted himself into knots trying to hide his earlier lies,” evokes an image of someone literally squirming with discomfort in the face of confrontation.  Go for it.  Saying, “they took the settlement because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” is lazy use of a proverb.  Much better to write, “they took the settlement because it seemed unlikely that the jury would award them anything.”  A good rule is to think about what image comes to mind when you use a cliché. If it is an evocative image that enriches what you are trying to say, fine.  If it just muddies up the discourse or obfuscates the message or emotion, Rewrite.  Rewrite.  Rewrite.

3.    If you can put your own spin on a cliché, then it can be a useful tool.  During an email exchange with a friend, who will no doubt read this, talking about partisan rhetoric, at one point I wrote, “it just seems like so many black pots and kettles.” “The pot calling the kettle black” is such a tired old saw, I was pretty sure she would get my meaning, even though I didn’t invoke the cliché directly. Of course there is the danger of writing something like that to an audience of people who haven’t heard your cliché before, and have no idea that iron pots and kettles suspended over a wood fire all turned black before we all started cooking on clean gas with stainless clad cookware. Know your audience before you go getting all clever on the cliché. A safer route with cliché-bending might be merely inserting a word or two of your own center-stage. “She found herself between the rock of lying and the hard place of time in jail,” might do well to succinctly describe someone’s state of mind during a trial. Especially in a piece that might already be long and complicated, and not necessarily focused on that person. Choose you cliché to work within context.

4.     Count.  Go back and count.  Just how many clichés are you relying on in your piece? I found more than a few here. I excised a few, and left the rest, because I thought they adhered to my own rules.  I would love for someone to call me out if you disagree. Cliches are like fine wine. Sip, don't guzzle.

flying on instinct

This weekend while Jim and I were working in the yard, I realized that there were a couple of Carolina Wrens flying busily in and out of the garage.  I then remembered that a pair had tried a couple of years ago to build a nest in the lower corner of a piece of sculptural artwork we have hanging in the garage.  Yes, we have artwork hanging in the garage.  Jim keeps a very tidy garage and it looks good in there.

a piece titled "hey pops" by my friend Evan Everhart;

the birds wanted to nest in the lower left corner...

twice

So what does this have to do with editing?  It has to do with instinct.  Carolina Wrens have an instinct that tells them to find safe nesting places inside of structures.  I think many writers have an instinct to find safe hiding places inside structures.  Familiar structures, comfortable words, easy phrases that repeat time and again in their writing.  That is where a little fearless editing comes in handy.  It's fine to begin writing inside your safe and comfortable places to get a piece started, but when it's time to start editing your work, it's time to shine a little light on those habits.  I suggest starting a list of words and phrases, and even sentence structures, that may show up too often.

So, two of my writing foibles are starting too many sentences with "So", and perhaps using "perhaps" too often. Oh. And I simply must excise "simply" about 75 percent of the time I use it.  And what's up with my annoying habit of starting so many sentences with conjunctions?  Making a written list, even if you toss it in a drawer afterwords, should have the effect of making a little bell go off in your head every time you head into too familiar compositional territory.  That gives you more control over your writing habits.  Even if your decision is to keep the trope, it's still a conscious choice.

I know that repetition is one of many tools available to a writer. The effect of repetition can make for mesmerizing prose or poetry when it is used with precision. Take a look at Poe's poem The Raven.  He ends each stanza with "more" but manipulates each line by using it sometimes as "nothing more", "evermore", "Nevermore", and "Never-nevermore". His manipulation of each line makes the ending "more" all the...well...more powerful than if he had artlessly ended each stanza with "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore'".  A valuable lesson to fledgling songwriters.

That last sentence is another habit of mine.  Writing thoughts or statements in incomplete sentences.  I'm aware of it, have been doing it for years, and it is part of my style that I am not going to change.  The key difference I see between developing a style and hiding under the familiar is first developing the ability to recognize that there is a difference.  Then the bird said nothing more.

yeah, whatever

There is a difference between being ironic and being sarcastic. So, what's the difference?  According to quite a few Google searches on the matter, not much.  But I beg to differ, which is both a cliche and a nice little piece of irony. In the era of shouting-match disagreements, ridiculous discourse at maximum volume, and TV hosts who cultivate guest lists for the most obvious level of mutual disdain, begging to differ with someone is charmingly quaint, and an irony, considering the current state of affairs.

As a writer, it will serve you well to know the difference.  Calling your brother a real math genius when he fails to calculate the tip for the dinner tab correctly is sarcastic.  Suggesting that he was perhaps absent on the day they taught tip calculation 101 in eighth grade is also sarcastic. As is calling him a skinflint.  Suggesting that his smart phone tip-calculator app might like to weigh in on the  matter is ironic.  How so?  Because the first three responses insult him outright, and the last one simply reminds him that he has a smart phone tip calculator app. A slight difference, but a difference nonetheless.

Irony is Mark Twain writing in all seriousness about the decaying art of lying while expounding on the ubiquitous need for the everyday lie, considering the general high-horse view on lying.  Shouting out "YOU LIE!" during a presidential speech to a joint session of congress is sarcastic and a bit coarse, though certainly in keeping with the history of that honorable body of governance.  Suggesting that a dubious plan for national health care may "need a few of the details worked out" is ironic.  And a bit sardonic as well, which is a related topic, though it might confuse things here a bit, so I'll leave it for another day.

Think of using irony as opposed to using sarcasm as the difference between using a rapier or a baseball bat to commit a murder.  The outcome may be the same, but the ensuing scene is entirely different.  They both may have their appropriate moment, but what one makes up for in convenience the other highlights forethought and style.  They both produce some blood and grievous wounds for the recipient.

what's that buzzing noise?

Perhaps the most laughable of all language foibles is the buzz word. For the sake of efficiency, "buzz word" defines both words and strings of words in common use in the business, conventional media, and social media worlds.

So, how does the buzz word differ from the cliche?  They sometimes intersect, but the cliche is generally a phrase we use as a comfortable cloak to keep us protected from the bold and sometimes frightening act of speaking plainly.  The buzz word is...well, bad slang for adults.  A college kid can be forgiven for calling some dude a swagger jacker for stealing his witty way with a baseball cap.  That's slang, which can be highly creative with interesting re-combinations of words and sounds. And it has the decency to be out of fashion by the time I post it.  The buzz word, not so much.  The buzz word is the work of people who own casual Friday business attire,ask whether things are "age-appropriate", and never let their pet phrases die a well-deserved and quiet death.

Nothing makes a grown-up look more silly than peppering speech (or writing) with stupid buzz words. (All right, wearing a Moose Lodge antler hat and doing secret handshakes might look marginally more silly, but this is a grammar blog.)  If you find yourself sitting around a conference table with a group of sales people, saying something like, "there is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there, and we need to get our ducks in a row and light a fire under our sales efforts.  I want you to parking-lot other priorities and really get your arms around these new initiatives.  If we are going to dollarize these opportunities by the end of this fiscal quarter, we are going to need to up-tier and drink from the fire hose.  Ping me as soon as you have something," you are in serious need of an intervention.

In fact it is perfectly acceptable for an employee driven to the brink of madness by buzz-jawing to jump you right at the conference table, going for a head slam with a triple lutz. Other employees will clap and cheer, and when the police fill out the report, they will nod sympathetically when she says, "I slipped." Saying "no" to buzz words is in the best interest of your physical well-being, and the mental health and happiness of your employees.  If you are not the boss, but merely an over-reaching employee, take heed.  Getting your arms around the management lingo in order to create a paradigm shift and move the needle on your mission-critical promotion can cause your fellow worker bees to take you out into the real parking lot and beat you with a stick.

I'm just sayin'.  On-boarding with the idea of going cold turkey on buzz words may well raise the bar for office dialoguing, giving you a halo effect, and up-tiering your career.  I know this has been a come to Jesus post, but I am going to be out of pocket for awhile.  Ping me if you have any thoughts.

If you are going to go there

Cliches are with us for a reason.  They are a nearly universally recognizable way for us to express ourselves in a sort of cultural short-hand.  If a group of people are sitting in a business meeting, and someone says, "this is where the rubber meets the road," the other meeting participants might roll their eyes and gag a little, but everyone around the table knows the speaker means that it is time for the people responsible for the project to be serious about taking action.  Why don't we just say, "it is time for us to take action"?  I can't answer that question.  I think we have a strange area in the Flocculonodular lobe of our brains (yeah, I found that on Wiki) that insists we speak in tired metaphors, and hope that somehow other people will think that indicates we are both smart and worldly.

So, if you can't avoid the cliches, which seem to be environmentally partial to business meetings, dashed-off emails, and personal conversations, at least educate yourself about where they come from and what they mean.  I am going to list a few of my favorites here.  War time seems to be particularly fruitful for the ubiquitous phrase.  I am also going to talk a little about some cliches that seem to have wandered hazily away from their origins.  (This paragraph, for those of you who write, is called foreshadowing.  It is a useful tool for letting people who may be distracted know what you are going to write or speak about before you actually do.)

Snafu--a marvelous and ubiquitous word that appears to have originated somewhere in the European theater during WWII.  Of course, because linguists love to argue about things, that theory is still in debate, but for our purposes it is good enough.  I think there is little disagreement that it is an acronym for "situation normal: all fucked up."  Though it originally seems to have been used to describe horrific messes, it has evolved into a much gentler little word.  It can now curtsy into the room to announce that IT had a snafu with the virtual meeting software, and everybody should get another cup of coffee.  It's a wonderful word with a respectable reputation and a very shady past.  My kind of word.  Fubar didn't fare so well.  I like it, but it still comes from the wrong side of the tracks.  If some one tells me something is fubar, I know that it's a jacked-up mess that is fucked up beyond all recognition.

The whole nine yards--the theories on this one are as plentiful as the theorists.  Who knows where it came from, and what the original reference was?  Apparently no one.  But I like the military theory.  Giving someone the whole nine yards meant feeding all of your ammunition through your machine gun when firing at an enemy.  So I don't go the whole nine yards unless I am deadly serious.

Toe the line--Ummmm.  Just don't ever write "tow the line."  Please.  There is lots of speculation about where the phrase originated, but none of it involves anyone dragging anything anywhere.  It means lining up precisely with something, be it your fellow soldiers, your political brethren, or company policy.

I guess I'll stop here, because the list is endless, but the attention-spans of my ADHD readers are not.  I may have already jumped the shark here, gotten myself into a pickle, scraped the bottom of the barrel, and crossed over the line...

carrying on ad nauseum

Are you nauseous?  Well, then you are about to make me feel nausea.  I must be nauseated by the very sight of you, which would be a cruel thing to say, but you were the one who admitted to being nauseous.  You wouldn't know from common usage, but to be "nauseous" is to be revolting, not revolted.  A big pile of dog vomit is extremely nauseous.  Just thinking about it is nauseating.

Language changes constantly.  New words come into being, and old words fade away.  It's a natural evolution, but that doesn't mean I can't mourn the passing of a useful distinction. If nauseous now means the same thing as nauseated, then what slips in its place in the lexicon?  Revolting, I suppose.  Or disgusting, abhorrent, distasteful, loathsome, sickening, detestable, repellent, or repugnant.

One of the joys of the English language is its rich lexicon.  One of the downfalls of the English language is its rich lexicon.  We have a bounty of words available  to represent an idea's many shades of grey.  So what's the big deal?  Just choose a word in common use that conveys the general idea.  But I can be disgusted, abhorred, or repelled by any number of things without feeling my stomach turn as it does when I smell a rotting carcass, or taste a foul bit of food.  Those two things are nauseous.  They can literally make me throw up.  (Sorry for that image.)

I can think of several things I consider revolting, disgusting, abhorrent and distasteful, without ever feeling queasy.  Snuff films, political corruption, ponzi schemes, federal taxes, and reality TV come to mind, and my breakfast is still safely tucked away in my belly.

I am a bit nauseated by the slow, painful death of nauseous.